


this kite-flying wind

by Hecate



Category: Bourne (Movies), Jason Bourne (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-It, Fuck canon anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 06:16:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8879191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hecate/pseuds/Hecate
Summary: Nicky wants to save the world. Jason wants her to be safe.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tenillypo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tenillypo/gifts).



It's the Friday after Jason left her, and Nicky Parsons decides to save the world. Someone has to, after all.

***

The first steps are surprisingly easy. She unravels some of the strings she used to follow while still working for the CIA, tugs at one of them and sees which one of her suspects pulls back and slips deeper into the shadows to hide from her. That's the one she needs.

“I want to help,” she tells the man once she finds him. He shoots her. 

She thinks of Jason as she lies on the ground, bleeding into the carpet; stops thinking of him as her life seems to drain away and she digs herself into it. She can't die. She just started to do the right thing after so long doing whatever the CIA told her, tumbling from one place and mission to another.

She can't die, and she doesn't because he comes back, her suspect comes back. Nicky thinks he might have tested her, he might have waited for the CIA to rescue her and take him in.

His return is a dumb thing to do. Because the CIA would have let her die, would have watched and followed him later, hiding in the shadows. She has never been worth as much to the agency as the information and connections this man might potentially have.

He stops the worst of the bleeding with rough hands, pulls her up and carries her out of the building. “Why do you want to help?” he asks, his steps shuddering through her body, pain echoing after them.

“Because I have to,” she replies, and knows that it's not much of an answer. Nicky hopes it will do for now.

***

The next time she sees Jason, her hair has grown and the blonde roots make her look like she once tried out something new with her hair and hated it. It reminds her of high school. She cuts it again, dyes it the kind of red that looks clearly fake but ordinary enough to make her a young woman instead of a suspect.

Jason helps her.

Nicky knows he let her find him, knows that she wouldn't have otherwise. It worries her enough that she tells him. Jason looks at her for a long time before he begins to teach her.

“Just in case,” he says, and she wonders if he trusts her or simply believes he will always be able to handle whatever she could possibly throw at him. There is still enough of the woman in her that she was at Treadstone, when she first met him, that she wants it to be the first option.

She doesn't tell him about her plans, about being shot. She is not ready for him to disagree with her, not about this, not yet. But soon she will be.

***

It takes her months of working with ever-changing hackers and conspiracy theorists, with bitter ex-agents and bitter fanatics to get somewhere. It takes months of work until she meets Christian Dassault, his name a promise, his connections roads and possibilities.

He looks at her, eyes familiarly wild, and she knows he is more than a cyber bogeyman, he is just as driven as her. She can work with that.

“This stuff is dangerous,” he tells her, and she nods.

“Of course it is.”

He goes on as if he hadn't heard her, and it irks Nicky. But she keeps her anger in check. It's not worse than any of the stuff she encountered at the CIA, the same old story repeating again and again no matter which side she is on.

“It could kill you, probably will,” Christian says.

“It's worth the risk,” she replies, and it seems as if he’s finally heard her. He stares at her with his frantic eyes, his smile just as manic.

“I guess you gonna be a problem for them,” he says. 

He looks like he is looking forward to that.

***

“He's dangerous for you,” Jason tells her.

Her hair is black this time around, reaching to her shoulders again. When she shrugs, it tickles her naked shoulders. It reminds her of a life before the CIA, when belonging to the agency still sounded like a good idea instead of the fucked-up mess it turned up to be. She should probably cut it again.

“I know,” she tells him. “All of this is.”

“Then why do you do it?” He sounds impatient, frustrated, and she thinks of _her_ Jason and pushes the memory away.

“For the same reason you went up against it all,” Nicky says.

Another frown, and it's strange that she never saw Jason smile, stranger still that she only now notices that.

“That was personal,” he says.

Nicky smiles. “So is this.”

***

She works with Christian and his group, uses her familiarity with the CIA to find them all the loopholes they couldn't before.

They don't trust her, they don't trust each other, and it's what keeps them alive. But it slows them down as well, it slows her down, and she hates the frustration that comes with it. 

“Just keep on working,” Christian tells her. “One day we'll find a way to hurt them just like they hurt all of us again and again. They can't hide from the world forever.”

Nicky nods. 

“They won't,” she promises him and herself. “They won't,” she repeats, and it's a promise to her past and to the world.

***

She kisses Jason because she wants to, because the both of them have not much left but their histories, Jason's fragmented and shattered, hers a mess of failed ambitions and dreams.

She's not Marie, she knows this, and the Jason that made himself a person after Wombosi would never love her like he loved Marie. And the Jason before that, the one she took care of, was too much of a weapon to be in love at all. She had wanted him anyway.

She wants Jason now.

Nicky just needs a reminder that she is risking her life for more than destroying the web of lies and murder the CIA made, that all of this matters because there are people out there, real people, not assets and not roles played. And they kiss and love, and fuck, and she can't let herself forget how that feels. 

Her hair is long and blonde, just like it used to be when she still believed in the CIA, when she still thought she was doing good. 

She decides to let it be.

***

Hacking the CIA is strangely easy at first, the files and structures feeling almost like home. Nicky finds what she needs, what Christian needs, and she downloads as much as she can. She knows that she doesn't have much time.

When she finds out about Jason's father, about David's father, it doesn't really surprise her. There had always been something missing from that story. There still is. And this might be enough to help Jason figure out his past.

She runs when the CIA cuts the power, forces herself to slow down not much later, faking normalcy. She still has time to find Jason before the CIA finds her; she still has a chance to tell him what she found out. 

She can still change the world.

***

Athens has gone mad, screams and fire and furious people surrounding her. It's a movie scene, a nightmare, and she tries to hide in it while waiting for Jason to find her. Nicky turns around, and he's there, and for a few seconds she is afraid of him again, just as she had been years ago. Then, relief.

“What's wrong?” he asks, and she hears the worry in his voice.

She knows he'll be disappointed in her. He always wanted her to be safe instead of being a saviour. He never quite understood. “I hacked the Agency. For Christian Dassault.”

Jason looks frustrated, angry, and Nicky rushes to explain. “I got all the Black Op files, we're putting them online.”

There is no time to tell Jason everything because the CIA is there, and Jason guides her through the chaos raging all around them. She tells him about his father instead, tells him about the new program. “It matters,” she says, and he tells her to run and hide. So she does.

He taught her well.

***

Day later, they come back together, both of them with new bruises.

“I don't think your father was just a simple analyst,” she says, and Jason looks away. “And I think they wanted you for Treadstone long before they came to you.”

She leads them to one of Christian's safe-houses in Munich, one of these surprisingly posh ones that not one of his crew ever seems to wonder about. Nicky lets herself imagine staying there for days, imagines them being safe, their bruises fading away.

She sits down next to Jason, close enough to feel the warmth of his body, the moment a wistful idea of normalcy. “Tell me about Marie,” she says, and she feels Jason tense. She goes on anyway because all she knows of Marie is her face and the data the CIA spit at her, all she knows is Jason's love for her. “What was she like?”

It takes Jason a long while to answer. “She was kind,” he finally says, and he isn't with Nicky anymore. “And brave. She always kept on going, and she just had so much hope.” Jason smiles, and it's bitter and sad and made of sharp edges. “Sometimes I wish I'd never met her at all.”

Nicky wonders if Marie ever thought the same.

***

They lose the files in Berlin, they lose the truth to the agency and a voice on a phone. It stuns Nicky how angry it all makes her, how helpless she feels. But it's okay, she can use that.

And Jason found out more about his father, found another piece of the puzzle. Soon, they'll find the rest.

***

“You can still get out of this,” he tells her before they leave for London to find Malcolm Smith.

She thinks he might have told Marie the very same thing again and again. She knows Marie didn't listen, would never have listened.

Neither will she. 

But Marie did it for him. Nicky does it for the world. And herself.

***

“They killed my father,” Jason says, coming back from the meeting with Smith. “They murdered my father just so he couldn't tell me about what Treadstone truly is, just so that I would still join up.” He stops, looks at her, wildly. “They killed him because of me.”

And Nicky hates the CIA that tiny bit more.

She helps Jason with his new injuries, cuts and bruises, and she listens as he gives her the details of the last few hours, his voice becoming steady once more. 

“This one,” he says, pointing at the picture of Heather Lee, “this one will get us in.”

Nicky looks at the woman, looks at Jason, and doesn't ask if they can trust Lee. Of course they can't. “What will we do?” she asks.

He smiles, grim and angry. “We'll end another program.”

***

Vegas is a mess. Dewey almost kills Jason and Heather kills him instead, just as Nicky raised her own gun to fire a shot. And Jason is going after the asset, and Nicky lets him even though she wished he would leave with her, would let this one thing just be.

She is not Marie. 

“You don't get it yet, do you?” Nicky says to Heather after she asked Jason to stay. “It's not a choice yet.” And then she follows Jason, steals a car to chase after the trails of destruction he and the asset leave all over Vegas.

She finds them in a sewer, she finds Jason tired and stumbling, bleeding from the gunshot wound. He goes down, and it's terrifying and awful, and she will not let him die. She will not let them win. 

Pulling the trigger is easier than it's ever been before, her hands steady and her aim true. The asset collapses and for a moment the world is still. The sirens break through the moment, break it open, and Jason is getting up, shaking, and he reaches out for her. 

Together, they stagger away

***

Nicky finds Kalloor after he leaves the hospital, and she tells him some splinters of the truth, tells him that the CIA will try to pull him in again.

“Don't let them,” she says, and she hopes he will keep on being the person he was on that stage ready to call Dewey and the CIA out, ready to scream the truth out into the world.

He nods.

Some hours later she puts the recording of Lee's conversation into Lee's car while Jason meets with her. Nicky watches them from the distance, imagines the charade Lee is putting on. She wonders if Lee could be like her, could make a different choice. Because Nicky, too, worked for the CIA, she worked for the agency even after she saw what it did to Jason.

But she had never been quite like Lee. She had never been this driven back then. That only came later when she finally decided to help Jason and fight everything she once believed in.

She finds Jason after he left Lee behind, falling into step with him. 

“She wants me to come in,” Jason tells her.

Nicky nods. “Yes.”

“I won't,” he says, and she smiles.

“I know,” she answers, and takes his hand.

Just for a moment, in that park, it feels a bit like a happy ending.

***

Jason cuts her hair, his hands warm and gentle.

“It can be over for you,” she says, looking down at the blonde strands littering the floor. “You could disappear again. Maybe this time forever. ”

He waits for her to look at him before he replies. “But it's not over for you.”

She nods. 

He reaches out then, takes her hand, and she thinks of all the times his hands killed for the CIA. She tightens her hold on him. The agency can't have him anymore.

Jason smiles.

“Then it's not over for me.”


End file.
